For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

And on Sundays, when he carried round the plate at St. John's, and at his wife's receptions once in two weeks, this was true.

Sara came out of her troubled revery at the sound of Madam Carroll's voice. This lady was going on with her subject, as her step-daughter had not spoken.

"Yes, Caroline Dalley is really very intelligent; she is one of the subscribers for our Saturday Review. You know we subscribe for one copy—about twelve families of our little circle here—and it goes to all in turn, beginning with the Farms. The Major selected it; the Major prefers its tone to that of our American journals as they are at present. Not that he cares for the long articles. With his—his wide experience, you know, the long articles could only be tiresome; they weary him greatly."

"I must have tired him, then, this morning; I read some of the long articles aloud."

"You had forgotten; you have been so long absent. It was very natural, I am sure. You will soon recall those little things."

"How can I recall what I never knew? No, mamma, it is not that; it is the—the change. I am perplexed all the time. I don't know what to do."

"It isn't so much what to do as what not to do," replied Madam Carroll, looking now at the lounge she had designed, and surveying it with her head a little on one side, so as to take in its perspective. "The Major has not yet recovered entirely from his illness of last winter, you know, and his strength cannot be overtaxed. A—a tranquil solitude is the best thing for him most of the time. I often go out of the room myself purposely, leaving him alone, or with Scar, whose childish talk, of course, makes no demand upon his attention; I do this to avoid tiring him."

"I don't think you ever tire him," said Sara.

The Major's wife glanced at her step-daughter; then she resumed her consideration of the lounge. "That is because I have been with him so constantly. I have learned. You will soon learn also. And then we shall have a very happy little household here at the Farms."

"I doubt it," said the girl, despondently. She paused. "I am afraid I am a disappointment to my father," she went on, with an effort, but unable longer to abstain from putting her fear into words—words which should be in substance, if not in actual form, a question. "I am afraid that as a woman, no longer a school-girl or child, I am not what he thought I should be, and therefore whenever I am with him he is oppressed by this. Each day I see less of him than I did the day before. There seems to be no time for me, no place. He has just told me that all his mornings would be occupied; by that he must have meant simply that he did not want me." Tears had come into her eyes as she spoke, but she did not let them fall.